The Problem with Mustang's 'Pony Girl' Brand

Mustang is launching 'Pony Girl,' an effort to market their brand to teen and tween girls with pink pony mustang designs, butterflies and other girly icons. The images and inspirational slogans will be featured on tees, jewelry, home decor and more. Fun, right?

Well, maybe.

Mustang will have to overcome a few SEO challenges, like the fact that when you search for "pony girl mustang," you get pictures of scantily clad women posing by cars and a YouTube video of a stripper by the same name. I won't even get in to the potential of clashing search terms with Atlanta's most popular strip joint, The Pink Pony. Perhaps they will have some trademarks set up that will help force others not to use their key branding terms. All I know is the current results are certainly not very tween-friendly.

Image via BrandWeek.

Google Launches Insights for Search

This week Google announced the launch of Insights for Search, a free tool to help marketers plan keyword campaigns.

Users can now get in depth information on keyword combonations, frequency of searches, geographic origin of searches and patterns of popularity. One of the most valuable features the new tool offers is the ability to distingush intentions for common search terms, for example, was this person searching for "Apple: the company" from "apple: the fruit?"

Google emphasized the increased ability for geographic targeting as well. This example from the New York Times illustrates why this can be a powerful function:

The tool is aimed primarily at marketers, who may use it to devise and track advertising campaigns. A car company, for instance, could experiment with different versions of a television ad in Cleveland and Columbus, and check the number of resulting searches in each city to see which one is more effective. Or it could use the data to find out where users are searching most actively for “fuel efficiency” and aim ads for a gas-sipping vehicle there.

Google also expects that Insights for Search will be used by sectors other than marketing.

“We are also very interested in uses like the economic forecasting, finance, sociological studies, even in etymological studies to track how new words spread in the population,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist.